Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Archives for 2009

You Have Not Because You Ask Not: The Media Appeal From Wikipedia for Financial Help

Wikipedia, the 10th most frequently accessed websites for information, recently launched a campaign to raise funds for their fledgling site. Funds that were more liken unto the tune of over $6 million. Wikipedia is community driven, does not allow advertisements and relies solely on donations for its livelihood. As difficult as this sounds, and as difficult as it is to actually do, Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, had a bright idea. He quickly discovered he had to be innovative in finding ways to fund such a popular and necessary addition to internet resources for the masses. And what better way to make his appeal than through the channels of the internet?

Wikipedia’s Founder’s Video Interview

(Courtesy of Advertising Age)

Even if some high-brow education supporters scoff at “asking” for money, Wikipedia understands that it simply takes money to operate. And so as not to offend or discourage visitors by bombarding them with advertiser’s marketing tactics, they decided to forgo this plan. When you visit the site, you get nothing but pure, unadulterated resources and information that is not tainted by prolific advertiser’s.Will donors be slow to give or will they be readily excited to further Mr. Wales project? This too concerns the folks at Wikipedia:

The Wikimedia Foundation’s executive director, Sue Gardner, said that like others in the nonprofit sector, she is concerned about how the sluggish economy could hurt donations. But with supporters around the world, she said, “I think we are buffered and insulated a little bit by the breadth and depth of our donor pool.”

Wikipedia must have funds to operate, as does every other online business that expects to turn a profit and stay successful. But just what is and what is not acceptable in terms of fundraising? Should companies ask for donations or should they be self-sufficient? Does it detract from the business’ image because they ask? Will donors respond favorably or simply ignore the requests?

I applaud Mr. Wales for having the courage, plan of action and wherewithal to make such an appeal to the masses. Because in the end, it doesn’t matter how you get the money, just as long as it is gotten (legally, of course) and that the business can continue serving the customers and keeping everyone happy. That is what it’s all about isn’t it?

Bringing CSR To The Banking Sector

and-the-question-isConnections. The world revolves around connections.

Businessmen love connections because it brings them business by word of mouth. Not only is this a pleasant ego boost, but also because it saves on that month’s advertising budget.

Consumers love connections because you will always trust an acquaintance’s opinions more than a total stranger’s. For instance, we just changed our gas & electricity supplier to one professionally sold to us by the grandmother of our daughter’s classmate.

And journalists, like me, hoard connections. Maybe one day you’ll need that person’s insight, or maybe one day they’ll feed you a good story. I’ve probably just written yours down while you were reading this.

Really great journalists end up working for major news outlets where their highly informed commentary will influence millions of people. At this pinnacle your storytelling ability will be excellent and further promotion can rest more upon the contacts you have to give that story the extra colour.

One such major news outlet is the BBC. [Read more…] about Bringing CSR To The Banking Sector

On harsh truths and the corporate website

Did you see 10 harsh truths about corporate websites?

It’s a great post by Paul Boag about some of the issues faced by people responsible for the corporate website in large organisations, and much of it had me nodding in agreement. If you saw it, I expect you had the same response. If you haven’t read it yet, go and do that now. I’ll wait here …

Back with me?

Here, in summary, are Paul’s 10 Harsh Truths:

  1. You need a separate web division
  2. Managing your website is a fulltime job
  3. Periodic redesign is not enough
  4. Your website cannot appeal to everyone
  5. You are wasting money on social networking
  6. Your website is not all about you
  7. You’re not getting enough value from your web team
  8. Design by committee brings death
  9. A CMS is not a silver bullet
  10. You have too much content.

Did you agree with all of those? I wonder if we agreed with the same things? Either way, it is a post likely to generate strong opinions.

I want to look at two of his 10 Truths today.

Truth #3: Periodic Redesign is Not Enough

putting it together

He argues that corporate websites go through a cycle of build:gradual deterioration:redesign, with the result that every few years the company faces a significant expense, and that it would be better to go for continual investment and a gradual evolution.

And to a large extent, I agree.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could identify those relatively low-cost changes which would improve your website significantly, without having to undergo a full-on redesign? The 80:20 rule works in most cases …

On the other hand, sometimes a site has had so many incremental changes – an extra tool here, additional pages there, a whole section bolted on the side – that it has become unwieldy and needs to be stripped down and rebuilt. Just sometimes, a redesign is exactly what is needed. Either for technical reasons or for business ones: perhaps the company is rebranding, or is launching a new strategy; perhaps they’ve merged or sold off a chunk of the business. The site should serve the needs of the business, and if the business is being redesigned, so too should the site be.

However, I agree that periodic redesign isn’t enough – between these rebuilds, there should be a process of continual improvement and evolution, as the needs of the business change and new best practices in corporate communications emerge.

Truth #4: Your Website Cannot Appeal to Everyone

Swiss Army Knife

The target audience too often includes a long, detailed list of diverse people … and that the website should be primarily aimed at a clearly defined audience.

Unfortunately, for the corporate website, the prospective audience just is diverse.

For a retail site, you can say that the audience is – for example – teenage girls (or buyers for the teenage girls, usually their mothers). The corporate site, however, has as its primary audience a mix of:

  • investors (potential and current; professional, with thousands of shares, and retail, with a handful of shares)
  • analysts (investment and social responsibility)
  • journalists (mainstream media – broadcasting and print – and the new media)
  • job-seekers (from top to bottom of the organisation, from the inexperienced to the non-executive director, the short-term contractor to the full-time careerist)
  • suppliers (of a whole range of products, services and people)
  • business partners (current and prospective)
  • customers (browsers, purchasers, those seeking support)
  • employees (current and – sometimes – alumni).

And it has to provide information for most of those people most of the time, as well as provide additional information, perhaps about corporate governance and compliance, about its social responsibility actions, or about its subsidiary businesses, or mergers and acquisitions – even corporate messages in times of crisis.

This potential audience can be reduced, though why would you want to? How else are you going to communicate with all these different people?

Do you really want to reduce the breadth of your target audience?

There are ways of reducing the diversity of the audience; companies take different approaches to this, and this will vary by the business strategy of the company.

  • Sometimes a company tries to meld its retail and corporate site together, and in that case usually the customer is seen as the primary audience, and the corporate information is hidden behind an About Us link. Others don’t address customers at all.
  • Some companies don’t address suppliers on their site; most don’t address their employees. Some don’t even put information for job-seekers on their corporate sites.
  • For some, business partners are all but irrelevant; for others, partnering is a significant part of the business strategy, and spelt out in full on the site.

And so the size of the potential audience can be reduced a bit, possibly, and even when you’ve done that, there still remains a wide range of interest groups, which as an absolute minimum includes investors and the media, each of which is a widely diverse group in itself. A financial print journalist may not be interested in the same material as a feature journalist or a broadcast journalist; and print journalists are not necessarily interested in the same information as a small-scale shareholder.

Is providing information for investors and journalists really more important than for the other stakeholders in the company? And scaling down the target audience in this way doesn’t take into account the required information that a company must provide on its site.

So what should those responsible for the corporate website do?

Authorised

It is very difficult to say which of this assortment of interest groups should be seen as the target audience; and that is why the corporate website is almost always broken down into silos, with a section for each interest area.

That way each section can be targeted to the interests of that group, providing them with the information that they need quickly, and providing easy access for them to find information elsewhere on the site if needed.

Even so, the overall site should be consistent in appearance and message, so that the brand and strategic message of the company is conveyed effectively across the whole site.

And that brings us to an issue touched on tangentially in the list of Harsh Truths: branding, and the debate over who gets a stake in the home page territory. Prime real-estate up for grabs – and of course everyone wants a share. Imagine the committee meetings in a Harsh Truth company to decide how many pixels each should be able to fill with content … and imagine the confusion on the home page if each division were allowed to fill their 250px*250px with whatever seemed best to them.

This is where Paul’s suggestion of a Web Division with adequate resource, experience and responsibility, led by an experienced manager with real control is interesting, and brings together a number of the Harsh Truths, particularly #1. Someone has to be in charge.

But who has control of the message? Who matches up the web strategy with the corporate strategy?

None of this is easy, and leads us to Harsh Truth #11: the corporate website is more difficult to manage than you’d think.

Back to Basics

Illuminated 17th century Danish bestiary

Imagine a parallel Internet universe, where the hyperlink doesn’t exist and the cost of making video is a million dollars a minute. No Flash either. No Java, no Shockwave, not even animated GIFs. In short–nothing moves …

So essentially, your web page in this universe is exactly like a page in a magazine or a book. Just words, and ordinary, motionless pictures. How would you get your message across? And what would it be?

In this universe you have to tell a job-seeker everything they need to know on one page. That means you have to determine exactly what information is necessary, and present it in an effective order. The information has to be clear and complete, because it’s not going to be clarified or amplified somewhere else. The text has to be well-written and interesting, because there aren’t going to be revolving pictures and talking heads to entertain the visitor.

Tough assignment!

I started thinking about this topic after accidentally landing on the Employment page of The Meadows Racetrack and Casino. I had just looked at twenty sites that used every trick except dancing girls to sell their message, so I was fairly startled by the retro simplicity at The Meadows. But since I happened to be at the site—and there wasn’t anything else to look at on the page—I read the message. And it was so clear, so personal, so inviting that I really wanted to get a job there.

Obviously, such a radically minimalist strategy can’t work for most companies. But this true story is a reminder that good content can be more important than slick presentation. Also that more is not necessarily better.

If you want to spend a little time on sharpening the Careers message, here’s an exercise. Take a look at your company’s existing site and imagine what a visitor would take away if they landed on the Careers home page and never did anything but read. Clicked no links, watched no videos. Just read the one page.

Back to basics

Some questions to consider:

  • If a visitor had no prior knowledge about the company, could they get a basic idea of its business identity?
  • Is there enough information to provide visitors with a general understanding of how the company finds, retains, and rewards employees?
  • Does the message highlight the most important things a visitor needs to know? Is the approach direct and personable?
  • Will visitors have the tools—and the desire—to take next steps?

I’d love to hear from any readers who try this exercise, so please share your findings! And in the next post, I’ll do a 180 degree turn to explore the latest, hottest trends for recruiting on the website.

Creative Brand Promotions – Barbie at NY Fashion Week

barbieBarbie is an iconic brand, and the Barbie doll will hit 50-years of age on March 9, 2009.  To celebrate the half-century mark, Mattel is thinking out-of-the box.  This weekend, Barbie will walk the runway at New York City’s Fashion Week in designs created by 50 of the top designers in the world, including well-known names like Tommy Hilfiger, Diane von Furstenberg, and Betsey Johnson.

Barbie is one of those brands that has become an icon.  The brand has been at the center of controversy while being adored by loyal consumers generation after generation.  In the U.S., the name “Barbie” has become a generic substitute for all similar dolls in the same way that Kleenex has become a generic name for tissues. 

The Barbie brand has had its ups and downs over the years, but lately, it’s been back on the rise.  After winning a lawsuit against the manufacturers of Bratz dolls last year that basically mitigates one of the brand’s main competitive threats, Barbie is on track to monopolize its market again.    [Read more…] about Creative Brand Promotions – Barbie at NY Fashion Week

LinkedIn – 5 Ways to Target Recruits

I recently asked Thursday Bram, a freelance writer and experienced recruiter, to discuss ways of using LinkedIn for recruitment.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn can be a recruiter’s dream: thousands of potential candidates listing their work histories online for recruiters to browse through, providing links to past supervisors and co-workers and even often providing links to their outside projects. But the sheer number of candidates on LinkedIn makes targeting a search absolutely crucial: sorting through thousands of profiles means that a labor-saving tool like LinkedIn just wouldn’t be doing its job…

These five tips can help you narrow down the field to a manageable number.

  1. Build up your own network

    The more connections you can add to your own LinkedIn network, the more people are within your extended network — and the more people you can contact directly. LinkedIn generally limits the information you can access about an individual who isn’t in your extended network. Even with a relatively small network on LinkedIn, your extended network can number in the thousands when you consider the people your contacts know, as well at those people’s contacts.

  2. Look for warm leads

    LinkedIn provides you with several tools to easily contact your network — you can quickly find out if anyone in your network has a recommendation for a particular position. Even if you simply send out a blanket email to your network, you can get back solid leads — complete with links to a LinkedIn profile full of information about that potential candidate. Not only will you get prospects that are likely interested in the position you need to fill but they’ll also come with the recommendation of someone in your own network.

  3. Use Google to search LinkedIn

    Google returns millions of results when you search for LinkedIn, but you can get some useful results by limiting your search. The following search string can be a starting point: copy “site:www.linkedin.com -intitle:answers -intitle:blog -intitle:directory” and then list keywords like your location and the specialty you’re looking for.

  4. Learn LinkedIn’s advanced options:

    Near the top of every page, LinkedIn has a box for searching for particular people. If you click into the advanced options, though, you can search for a lot more than a name. You can search for particular titles, locations, keywords, industries and more. You can start limiting your search by the factors relevant to a job opening and then slowly move outward, expanding your results as your search progresses. For example, you can limit your search to a particular job title in the town where you’re looking to place a candidate. If you don’t find the right candidate in your results, though, you can expand your search to the state level or even ignore location.

  5. Use LinkedIn’s hiring tools

    LinkedIn has a whole set of tools built with recruiting in mind. From posting job opportunities to searching for candidates, LinkedIn’s tools were created with the full extent of its network in mind. While there is a price tag for using these tools — posting a job costs $195 per 30-day posting — they do allow you to take full advantage of the website’s total database.

Thanks, Thursday!